


Preventative Medicine

by Feneris



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Community: snkkink, Gen, Mad Science, The Cure for Everything, vaccination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feneris/pseuds/Feneris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grisha Jeager was once told that he would know he had succeeded as a doctor when he had made himself obsolete.</p><p>If that was true, than he was the most successful doctor humanity had ever seen. Because his new "vaccine" had not only cured the plague, but also apparently vaccinated a person against everything from malnutrition to grievous bodily harm.</p><p>He knew he shouldn't have used those titan cells.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Preventative Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> Yup! Nother kink meme fill. This one called for Grisha Jeager to create his cure for the plague with titan bits, and unknowingly create a serum which passed on the titan's regenerative and photosynthetic abilities onto humans. And because Grisha vaccinated the entire district...
> 
> Just the thought of what the Shifter Trio was thinking gave me countless inspiration.

Plagues were always nasty, and in an overcrowded gate-district like Shiganshina they took on a special kind of nasty. Already the corpse wagon was traveling the streets calling for folks to bring out their dead. A massive plague pyre had been burning in the center of the market square day and night, and the entire district had already been quarantined.

In truth, under normal circumstances Grisha Jeager would have already had his family on the first riverboat to Wall Rose when the first cases started coming in. He knew better than most that the best thing to be done when a plague hit was to get out before it started to spread.

But that wasn't an option. Not when the one of those first cases was his wife.

Which was why he was down in his basement laboratory trying desperately to come up with something, anything, that might at the very least ensure his beloved wife made it through alive.

But the problem with plagues was that every outbreak was always different. This particular pestilence brought with it a severe fever, vomiting, and caused the victim to cough up black sludge. It had proved impervious to all previous treatments, and at the moment there was nothing that could be done beyond have Eren stand at his mother's bedside with a cool cloth and pray. (Not that Grisha Jeager was under the illusion that prayers would do a single lick of good.)

Grisha let out a snarl of frustration. This plague was virulent one, affecting even the rats that scurried in Shiganshina's drains. Probably the only things immune to the trice-damned thing was the titans.

Something clicked. Slowly the doctor's head turned towards a collection of stoppered glass bottles sitting in a corner lit by sunlight reflected in from a barred window.

Titan cells, extracted at great cost and secrecy with the highest of hopes. They were durable, reproducing aggressively with only a little sunlight, and seemingly resistant to anything Grisha had used against them.

It was insane. Even he could acknowledge that. If he went around administering titan cells to his patients and he'd most likely turn them all into titans.

But, there were titan shifters. Humans that could turn back from titans. Could he perhaps water them down, figuratively speaking. Give the side-effects without the main problem.

And it wasn't as if there were any other options.

His mind started going a mile a minute, as he started to consider possibilities. He retrieved one of the bottles from the sunlit corner, and got to work.

\---

His first test comes two weeks later. By the grace of the gods Carla has managed to hang on, even though her condition deteriorates day by day, even worse Eren has started to show signs, and even Grisha can feel the beginnings of a cough develop.

His first human test subject is the wife of a garrison solider. He has a loaded pistol in his coat as he gives her the injection. Just in case.

The next morning he his greeted at his door by an overjoyed Hannes, who is practically sobbing with relief as he tells Grisha that his wife is already completely recovered.

Grisha wastes no time in administering his new cure-slash-vaccine to his entire family. By noon there is a line outside his door stretching all the way down the street.

By the time the week is out, the plague has been wiped completely from Shiganshina's streets.

It's not until Eren accidentally cuts himself helping his mother prepare dinner, and has the cut heal within seconds with a whiff of steam, that Grisha finds out about the side-effects.

\---

When he was still a student, Grisha's teacher had once told him, half-jokingly, that he would know he had succeeded as a doctor when he had made himself obsolete. If that was true, than Grisha Jeager was the most successful doctor to have ever lived. In short, his vaccine worked. Too well. If it wasn't for house-calls outside of Shiganshina, the occasional vaccination and a couple of rich hypochondriacs (for who's imagined aliments there was no cure.) he would have been out of business.

"What's that?" his new foster-daughter asks as he finishes swabbing a spot on her elbow.

"A vaccine," he explains as he fills the needle.

"For what?"

"Everything," Eren replies before his father can answer. "It's good for measles, cholera, all kinds of poxes, vomiting, starvation, dismemberment..."

It was a good thing Grisha Jeager was the only one in Shiganshina that actually understood anything about vaccination beyond "it stops you from getting sick." Otherwise there would have been a lot more people asking just how he could vaccinate someone against anything from malnutrition to grievous bodily injury.

"Scurry, rickets, broken bones, burns, lacerations, tapeworms, ringworms, the cold, the chills, fevers of all kinds..."

It was also a good thing that a rumor had started up, to the effect that if the nobles in the inner city ever found out about Dr. Jeager's miraculous vaccine, than they would spirit him off to the inner city and keep it all to themselves. Therefore everyone had shut up about the vaccine, beyond an occasional remark about the importance of getting children vaccinated. Thus, keeping the knowledge of said vaccine within the confines of Shiganshina.

"Arthritis, blindness, deafness, paralysis, cancer, sunburn, blunt trauma, stab wounds, animal bites, infections..."

To his grief, he would later find out that one of the few things his vaccine didn't protect against, was being devoured by a titan.

\---

Across the Walls there was one thing agreed on by those who lived in close proximity to the refugee camps, there was something really strange about the refugees from Shiganshina. They ate only a fraction of what a normal person would consume, yet they often looked healthier and more well-feed than even the citizens of the towns. They never got sick, not even when cholera and flu outbreaks swept through the regions. Something they attributed to the vaccination efforts of their local doctor. (Whose mysterious disappearance they blamed on the nobility and the military police.) There was also a certain fearlessness to them, they were always the first to volunteer for the dangerous jobs, seemingly unconcerned about the risk and eager for the increased pay. Most alarmingly, in a particular tavern patronized by individuals of a certain immoral and unlawful nature, there was a man who would claim, with wide-eyed fear and awe, that he once shot a man from Shiganshina in the head, right between the eyes, and said man had gotten up five minutes later, without a scratch on him.

While most folks laughed off the last story as the teller merely being a really terrible aim, no one would deny that there was something odd about the folks from Shiganshina.

\---

Annie cursed in pain and shock, clutching her bleeding hand. They had warned her, never let you blade cables wrap around your fingers, if something happened, then those cables would sheer your fingers right off.

And that's exactly what happened.

Slowly Annie cracked open her hand and got a look at the damage. It... wasn't as bad as she feared, only three of the fingers on her right hand had been cut off, and thankfully the finger her ring was on wasn't one of them. Already she could see the wound steaming as the flesh and bone began to regenerate. It wasn't that bad, she just had to wait a bit for the fingers to grow back, so long as no one saw her, she'd be fine.

"ANNIE! YOU OKAY?!"

A feeling of dread sunk into her stomach as Armin landed next to her. There was no way he hadn't seen her hand. He'd know. Maybe not everything, but enough. He would know she wasn't entirely human.

"Here let me see your hand," Armin called out, reaching for a wrap of bandages in his belt bag. Wordlessly she held out her hand.

She'd have to kill him, no way around it. Make it look like an accident, those happened all the time anyway. Just strike when he's distracted by her hand. She watched his face as he took in the sight of her regenerating fingers. What would she see? Fear? Shock? Revulsion?

Relief??

Sure enough, Armin let out a long breath of what could only be described as relief. He put away the roll of bandages.

"I guess Eren's dad vaccinated you too huh?"

\---

Jean turned just in time to see Armin and Mikasa, with Eren supported between them alight onto the rooftop.

"What happened to you guys!?"

"We had a close call," Armin gasped, sitting down on the roof to catch his breath. "Way too close."

They looked like it. All three of them had their uniforms soaked in blood, though most of it looked like it was titan blood, if the steam coming off them was any indication. Armin had a large gash across his chest, Mikasa was sporting a series of cuts along her right leg, and Eren was missing an arm.

"Guys," Marco said nervously, "We need to get you to the medic."

"We'll be fine," Eren snarled, sitting down next to Armin. "We've been vaccinated."

"The hell!?" Jean snarled back. "You're missing am arm!"

"And I told you Horseface," Eren snapped. "My dad vaccinated us against it."

"You can't vaccinate someone against loosing a damn...!"

That's when there was a sudden burst of steam from the severed stump where Eren's arm once was. Jean, Marco, Sasha, Connie, Krista, Ymir, Reiner, Annie, and Bertholdt all watched in shock as Eren's severed arm regrew before their eyes.

"See!" Eren cried, holding up the newly regrown limb. "I told you I've been vaccinated!"

No one answered, they just stared. Stared at Eren's new arm, at the fact that the steam coming off Armin and Mikasa wasn't coming from the blood on their clothing, but from their wounds themselves. They stared at the fact that said wounds were smaller than one they first noticed them, and seemed to be closing before their eyes.

Just like a titan's would.

They just stared, their faces a mixture of shock and fear.


End file.
